By JESSE GRAHAM
THE YARRA Ranges Highway Patrol has issued a firm warning to drivers around the valley this summer – do the wrong thing and you’ll get caught.
With the holiday season drawing closer, the Highway Patrol is ramping up its Summer Stay campaign, which features a number of road operations targeting certain bad driving behaviours.
Sergeant John Morgan told the Mail that the first operation of the summer season – Operation RAID (Remove All Impaired Drivers) wrapped up on Sunday 7 December.
The operation began on 14 November and had a strong focus on catching drunk drivers – Sgt Morgan said that as of Thursday 4 December, police had conducted 16,716 preliminary breath tests.
As a result of those tests, 28 people in the Yarra Ranges were charged with drink driving, and 753 offences – including mobile phone use, speeding and not wearing seatbelts – were recorded.
“Obviously, we’re putting in a really big effort – we’re coming ninth out of the state for enforcement and third out of the state for the number of preliminary breath tests we’ve conducted,” Sgt Morgan said.
As of yesterday (Monday 8 December), the Highway Patrol began Operation Breakup, which is aimed at reducing road trauma around the time of Christmas break-up parties around the state.
Drunk drivers, drivers using their phones or driving without a seatbelt will all be in the crosshairs in Operation Breakup, which is immediately followed by Operation Crossroads from 23 December-3 January 2015.
“That’s over the official holiday toll period and, again, it’ll be a real focus on road safety and speeding as people take off on their holidays,” Sgt Morgan said.
The final operation for the Summer Stay campaign is the one-day Operation Fresh Start, which will address industrial workers on their first day back to work for the year.
While the state-wide operations are taking place, Sgt Morgan said police would be actively working in a number of other operations, such as Pincer.
During Operation Pincer, which will be run until May 2015, police will have marked and unmarked vehicles from around the Yarra Ranges, Knox and Maroondah Police Service Areas (PSAs) patrolling back roads for dangerous motorcycle riding.
Meanwhile, drivers that flaunt the law on the Black Spur or the Reefton Spur will be falling into the hands of police officers running Operation Surreptitious, who will specifically target those areas until May.
“Again, that’s looking at some of the riders’ behaviour with excessive speed,” Sgt Morgan said.
“Obviously, drivers will be booked as well if they’re speeding.”
Sgt Morgan said police would have a heavy focus on dangerous driver behaviour, including low-level speeding.
He said that Traffic Accident Commission (TAC) information showed that the majority of crashes in the Yarra Ranges took place on 60 and 70 kilometres-per-hour speed zoned roads, mostly on weekends and between 8am-6pm.
To address this, officers will be taking part in Operation Step and targeting speeding on these slower-zoned roads, particularly drivers who regularly speed by small amounts.
“We’ll have guys out there – not only Highway Patrol members but all-station involvement as well, looking at low-level speeding,” Sgt Morgan said.
“You will be booked even if you’re doing under 10km/h over.”
Meanwhile, Operation Osborn will seek out drug-affected drivers and Operation Watchful will use plain-clothed police officers to address one of the biggest causes of driver distraction – mobile phone use.
“What we got told by the TAC and our own intelligence was that we were having a lot of rear-end collisions,” Sgt Morgan said.
“They’re usually caused because drivers are distracted, and the number-one cause of driver distraction is mobile phones.”
Sgt Morgan said that younger drivers and tradesworkers were more often picked up for mobile phone offences, and that drivers needed to be aware of the rules about mobile phones.
“Most people use it (their phones) as a GPS, and they think they’re entitled to it,” he said.
“They can’t – it has to be in a GPS holder. They can’t have it on their lap and use it as a GPS.”
It might seem like there are a lot of operations being run by police and that’s because there is – Sgt Morgan said police presence would be ramped up and drivers flouting the law would be caught.
He gave an example of an unmarked police officer riding on a motorbike along Healesville-Kinglake Road, who was overtaken by another rider – who then also overtook a truck – travelling at 180km/h.
“The guy had his bike impounded and lost his license for a year,” Sgt Morgan said.
“Just because you don’t see us doesn’t necessarily mean we’re not there.
“But if you just do the right thing, you don’t have an issue – if you do the wrong thing, you’ve got a really good chance of getting booked.”
